Sunday, January 25, 2009

Sing A Song Of Prostitution! ...

When the title for this post popped into my head a few days ago, I was singing it to the tune of "Sing a Song of Merry Christmas!" (Holy crap. I just Googled that title to make sure I capitalized it correctly and do you know who composed it? Mozart! Wow. I'm a pretty big fan of Wolfie, but that bit o' knowledge had somehow escaped me. The things you learn every day, huh?)

Anyway, the title of the post refers to my latest recording effort, a knockout cover of The Police's "Roxanne" by George Michael.

Given the lyric "I won't share you with another boy," this isn't the most logical song for a woman to sing, but the first time I heard this arrangement, I was blown away and knew I wanted to try it someday.

While "Roxanne" isn't my favorite of Sting's songs (that'd be "Don't Stand So Close to Me" for those of you playing along at home), when it's rearranged into a sultry jazz number, I'm all over it.

Well, I try to be, anyway. As ever, this is a work in progress. There are kinks to iron out, but considering that Brian and I cobbled this together from three takes, and I refer to my first take of any song as my "first pancake" because it's the one I'm most likely to want to throw away, we made a fair amount of progress in a couple of hours. George Michael's version tags out more appropriately, but Brian just applied a fade to the end of this track for the time being. I'll attempt the ending the next time we meet. Oh, and the "do do do do do dos" between verses? That's George. We left a bit of him in, though I don't think we sound very different.

Whoa, kind of like a torch song! I had never thought of that song in that way. Your voice is excellent! Thanks for posting the link to your peformance, and thanks to J.Marquis for directing me here to take a listen!!

I love doing other people's songs in odd ways. There is a local band where I live who did a slow, sad Townes Van Zandt song as an uptempo sort-of happy number on their CD... it works very nicely!

I haven't gotten OUR band to do anything like that yet, but I'm trying. Our bassist and I want to do a rocked-up version of "Tainted Love" with a straight-four beat instead of the swing-beat thing that Soft Cell did, and I have always wanted to do a power-chord-guitar-heavy version of "Girl U Want" by Devo... both are synth-oriented things that I think would sound cool with some guitars and melodic hooks, without all the synths. (I'm the keyboard player, so I guess I would have to play a Hammond or regular piano instead of synth!, but both those songs could work nicely that way.)

Although I don't think it is the best song ever, I have always toyed with doing a quiet, atmospheric acoustic ballad version of "Believe" by Cher. You would be able to sing it better than I will, once I eventually get around to doing it! But that's an idea, anyway.

Ooh, I like the Cher/"Believe" idea, Snave! Interesting! I like the Shins tune, though I don't think it's right for me. But the guitar in it reminded me of Jeffrey Gaines' live acoustic version of "In Your Eyes." If you've never heard it, find it on iTunes. I love it. And Gaines is way underappreciated.

It is an odd song for a girl to sing. But I believe you make it work. As Snave said, it is sort of like a torch song. Which brings up a thought--I'd really like to hear you sing Cole Porter's "So in Love." I think it would really fit your voice, which is beautiful.